If a customer pays two or more bills from a biller by way of a self-initiated payment method using a payment order, which can be implemented by a paper-based payment carrier (e.g., cheque), a bank transfer, or electronically via bank transfer by online- or internet banking in one amount, the biller has the problem of identifying which partial amount of the total incoming payment amount belongs to which bill. In such cases, particularly if a plurality of bills are paid with a single payment, it is common practice for customers to send a so-called “advice of settlement” to the biller parallel to the payment. The advice of settlement comprises a detailed list of the bills to be paid including the respective (partial-) amounts. Such advice of settlement can have a volume of a few hundred pages in cases of business relationships, in which a large company is on the customer side. The advice of settlement is sent as a hard copy to the biller and the customer references to the particular advice of settlement on the payment order.
This procedure has several disadvantages: The customer has to create the advice of settlement, either electronically (by means of his business software) or by hand; he has to send it to the biller (either by normal mail or by email), thereby addressing it to the correct address and the responsible person, which is often very difficult; and he has to ensure that the advice of settlement reaches the biller at about the same time as the payment. The biller on the other side has to process the incoming advice of settlement. This means that he has to enter the data into his business software system. In order to allow an automatic processing of the incoming payment, the data must be entered before the payment is made. In case the customer does not send any advice of settlement—or it arrives far too late—the biller has the problem to assign the correct bills to the amount or partial amounts. This causes complex queries to the customer.
Another issue is that modern business software payments, which cannot be exactly assigned to specific bills, are often automatically distributed to open items. This often causes erroneous bookings with subsequent cancellation bookings, which waste storage of the computer system and strain performance.
Thus, there is a need for a method, software application and/or data processing system providing a more efficient solution of at least some of the problems described above. Particularly, it may be desirable to provide a software application having a mechanism for enabling a better processing of bills or payments in combination with an advice of settlement.
The above description is based on the knowledge of the present inventors and not necessarily that known in the art.